As the United States poultry industry has grown and matured over the past twenty years, poultry prices have tended to remain relatively stable. Given that the cost of ancillary goods and services associated with poultry production has continuously escalated over the same period, the relative stability of poultry prices indicates that there has been and continues to be constant pressure to develop new technology and production methodologies aimed at reducing production costs by way of increasing overall production efficiency.
Two areas of particular interest to commercial poultry producers, with regard to their stock, are feed conversion ratios and bird mortality rates. Feed conversion ratio relates the amount of feed consumed by a bird to produce a pound of product, and bird mortality rates relate to the premature death and hence, complete loss of the intended final product. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that commercial producers strive to maximize feed conversion ratios, and minimize bird mortality rates, as optimizing either of these parameters would ultimately lead to lower overall production costs and hence greater profit margins.
One major factor relevant to both the aspects of feed conversion ratios and bird mortality rates, is the ambient pathogen concentration within the poultry house environment. It has been well documented, through extensive research, that higher ambient pathogen levels generally lead to less than optimal feed conversion ratios, while leading to higher than optimal mortality rates. Therefor, it is reasonable to assume that generally lowering ambient pathogen concentrations within the poultry house would lead to improvements in both the feed conversion ratios and mortality rates, and hence from the discussion above, lead to a generally more cost efficient operation. These are the primary motivating factors behind the development and disclosure of the present invention presented herein.